Technical Field
The technical field relates to a printing apparatus and more particularly relates to a three-dimensional printing apparatus and a nozzle temperature adjustment method thereof.
Description of Related Art
With the progress in computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), manufacturers have developed the technology of three-dimensional (3-D) printing for rapidly embodying an original design concept. In fact, the 3-D printing technology is a collective term referring to a series of rapid prototyping (RP) techniques, and the basic principle is laminate manufacture, wherein a rapid prototyping machine is used to form cross-sectional shapes of a workpiece in the X-Y plane through scanning, shift inteiniittently at a layer thickness in the Z coordinates, and ultimately form 3-D objects. The 3-D printing technology is applicable regardless of the geometric shapes and the RP technology produces excellent outputs in particular for complex parts, which saves efforts and processing time significantly. The 3-D printing technology is capable of presenting an object of a digital 3-D model designed by means of computer-aided design (CAD) software in less time for the user to touch and actually feel the geometry of the model, or even to test the assemblability of the parts and possible functions.
At present, most of the 3-D printing apparatuses that utilize the aforementioned RP method to form 3-D objects transport a hot melt wire material to a melting nozzle by a feed material mechanism, and then heat and melt the hot melt wire material through the melting nozzle to apply the hot melt wire material layer by layer on a base, thereby forming the 3-D object. Due to material properties, different hot melt wire materials may have different melting points. If the temperature of the melting nozzle is too high, the heated hot melt wire material may deteriorate or even burn. However, if the temperature of the melting nozzle is too low, the hot melt wire material may not be melted completely, which results in jam or residue of the hot melt wire material in the feed material mechanism or the nozzle. Therefore, how to control the temperature of the melting nozzle in an ideal state is a concern of persons skilled in the art.